Johann Grueber
Johann Grueber (Chinese白 乃 心, pinyin Bái Nǎixīn; born October 28, 1623 Linz, † September 30, 1680 in Sárospatak, Hungary) was an explorer, Jesuit and missionary. He became the first European ever in the Tibetan capital Lhasa.
- 4.1 Travel reports and letters Johann Griiber
- 4.2 Literature about Johann Grueber
Life
Youth and studies
Little is known about Johann Griiber youth. In his hometown of Linz, he attended the Jesuit gymnasium; on 18 October 1641, he stepped in Vienna with the Society of Jesus. After studying philosophy and mathematics (1644-1647) in Vienna, Graz and Leoben he served as Master of Arts, various high school teacher posts in Leoben, Graz and Ödenburg before 1655 the priests ordained after a four-year study of theology in Graz.
Travel to India and China (1656-1661)
In February 1656 Grueber of Jesuit General Goswin Nickel was awarded the contract, together with his friar Bernhard Diestel to explore a land route to China as part of the Asia mission. About Venice, Eastern Mediterranean and Smyrna reached the two just before Christmas 1656 to Isfahan.
However, your plan to travel further across from there through Asia, they had to give up because of the threat of war. Instead, they moved to Bandar Abbas on the southern coast of Persia, went from there by ship to India and went to Surat in the Gulf of Khambhat on land, where they were initially arrested and detained for ten months. After her release, she took an English ship finally in the Portuguese colony of Macao, where the two arrived in July 1658.
In April 1659 Grueber and Diestel received in Macau by the responsible Vice- Provincial of the Jesuits, Simon da Cunha, the order to continue their way to Beijing and then explore from there a land route to Europe. In Beijing Grueber was employed for two years at the court of Emperor Shunzhi, who was the Christian missionaries set against liberal in the imperial astronomical office and worked, among others, together with his German monk Adam Schall von Bell, a close confidant of the emperor. Griiber traveling companion Diestel died 1660 in Tsinan.
Travel from Beijing via Lhasa to Agra (1661-1662)
On April 13, 1661, two months after Emperor Shunzhis death, Grueber be made together with the Belgian Jesuit Albert d' Orville on the overland route to Europe. About Xinan and Xining they left mid- July 1661 the Chinese empire area and covered with a caravan in a southwesterly direction on the shore of Qinghai Lake along, crossed the Tibetan highlands and came over the Trans Himalayan finally, on October 8, 1661 the first Europeans ever in the Tibetan capital, " which the Chinese call Cam, the Tartars Barantola and the strangers Lhasa ".
During his month-long stay in Lhasa Grueber, who produced numerous drawings, including pictures of the Potala Palace, various prayer wheels and religious places of worship as well as a portrait of the fifth Dalai Lama, Ngawang Lobsang Gyatsho, after a presentation at the entrance of the palace. The Dalai Lama himself was Grueber not to face because he did not want to submit to the prescribed ceremonies to be a Catholic priest.
The end of November broke Grueber and d' Orville south on, crossed in winter the Himalayas, to end the year the city Cuthi ( Nilam Dzong ) in Nepal and met other stations in Patna and Benares finally end in March 1662 in Agra a, the residence of the major Indian Mughals, where they were welcomed by their religious brothers Johann and Heinrich Roth Busäus. Shortly thereafter, on April 8, 1662, died Griiber traveling companion d' Orville, who had been upon arrival in Agra in poor health, and was ( as later Roth) buried in the Padri -Santos - chapel in the suburb Lashkarpur.
Return to Europe (1662-1665)
Grueber continued his return journey now continues along with Roth. On September 4, 1662 two missionaries set out in Agra and reached by land via Kabul, Persia and Asia Minor to Europe, where they arrived in Rome on February 20, 1664. Your detailed travel reports, which created a great stir, published the local polymath Athanasius Kircher 1667 illustrata in his Encyclopedia of China.
However complained Grueber than two years later the work for the first time got to face, in a letter to Kircher from September 20, 1669 from Trnava "I wish you had sent me at least the title of each chapter before it went to press. I would have let you certainly get some information of no small importance. I would like to offer this zuzuschicken in the near future along with my own records, I could not even finish yet because of my work among soldiers. Certain points in the China Illustrata must necessarily be corrected, especially the drawings. " Thereupon ensued an intensive correspondence between the two, during which Grueber gave the urgent advice to take out a portrait of the Emperor of China from the factory. The presentation of the emperor with a stick and a dog, as it was reproduced in the China Illustrata would be regarded in China as an insult. On Griiber recommendation, represent the Emperor either standing or sitting on a laden with books and mathematical instruments table, Kircher responded insulted, and there was no further cooperation.
Disease and last years (1665-1680)
Already in May 1665 Grueber was again on the way back to China, again together with Heinrich Roth, had the Jesuit General Giovanni Paolo Oliva contract to set up a mission in Nepal. But ill already in Constantinople Opel Grueber and had to cancel the trip to the East, while Roth came back to Agra and there died in 1668. Grueber returned to Central Europe and was assigned after his recovery of the Hungarian Mission; from unpublished letters show that he spent two years as a chaplain at the imperial troops in Transylvania. From September 1669 he was also in Trnava and Trenčín; Grueber died on September 30, 1680 at the age of 56 years in the Hungarian Sárospatak.
Importance and Responses
More than three centuries after the Asian tour of Odorico de Pordenone Grueber was only the second European who came to Tibet, and the first European to ever he reached the city of Lhasa and the court of the Dalai Lama. Although Grueber self-published any of his records, represent his reports, supplemented by a number of preserved letters, the first useful and shaped European descriptions of Tibet in particular the image of Lhasa in Europe for centuries. In addition, Grueber kept on the collected manuscripts Henry Roth who his companion confided to him in 1665 in the separation of Constantinople Opel had ( including the first by a European wrote Sanskrit grammar ) thus involved, and was indirectly to its role as a pioneer of modern Indology.
The Austrian writer Franz Braumann processed material from Griiber travelogues and letters in his adventure novel ride to Barantola. The Adventures of Tibet travelers Johannes Grueber (1958), for which he was awarded the Austrian State Prize for Children 's and Youth Literature.
Name spelling
The old Upper German spelling of his name corresponds phonetically today dialectal pronunciation " Gruaber " and to the hiatus (and not the umlaut "ü" ) represent. Occasionally found in the literature, based on the Latinized form of his name, but also the modern German spelling " Johann (es) Gruber ".